86 CHAELES DARWIN. 



passed over without notice. In 1858 Wallace was working at the 

 Natural History of the Malay Archipelago, whither he had gone in 

 1854. He sent home to Darwin a memoir, in which it was found 

 when the latter opened it that Wallace had independently arrived 

 at the same conclusion regarding the Origin of Species, namely, 

 that ' natural selection ' was the great factor in the process. The 

 letter accompanying the memoir requested that Darwin would for- 

 ward it to Sir C Lyell for presentation to the Linnean Society. 

 What did Darwin do? He at once sent it with strong and 

 generous commendation to Lyell, who sent it on to the Society. 

 Lyell and Hooker, who were both aware of the fact that Darwin 

 had come to a similar conclusion, backed up by more than twenty 

 years' gathering of detail and fact, advised him to issue a digest of 

 his own work side by side with Wallace's paper. He did so, and 

 the two papers were read on the same evening, July the ist, 1858, 

 before the Linnean Society. The story of this double recognition 

 of a rival's worth is one of the brightest records in scientific 

 renown. It is to the immortal honour of both men. " The elder 

 naturalist never strove for a moment to press his own claim to 

 priority against the younger ; the younger, with singular generosity 

 and courtesy, waived his own claim to divide the honours of dis- 

 covery in favour of the elder. Not one word, save words of 

 fraternal admiration and cordial appreciation, ever passed the lips of 

 either with regard to the other " I After the reading of the papers, 

 Darwin diligently laboured to finish the first great work that was 

 destined to such fame, and on November the 24th, 1859, a date 

 not to be forgotten, the Origin of Species was presented to the 

 astonished world. 



We all know the result. Atheist, Materialist, Iconoclast, 

 Ishmaelite, were among the mildest epithets hurled at him and his 

 work by men who knew absolutely nothing about it. At the 

 Oxford meeting of the British Association a stormy debate was 

 held on it, when Henslow, Darwin's old friend and tutor, presided 

 over the Biological Section for the last time. A grand passage-at- 

 arms was witnessed between Bishop Wilberforce and "young 

 Huxley," who warmly defended the book and its author. It was 

 Huxley, who, when asked by one of the opponents whether he was 

 related on the paternal or maternal side to an ape, replied that if 



